Please join me in praying for another Lymie, our third Victoria. Victoria Wilguess is from Oklahoma. Victoria has been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, Lyme Disease and co-infections. Victoria has pain all over, weakness, fevers, nausea, dizziness, insomnia, brain fog, migraines and horrible fatigue. She has also lost her ability to concentrate.
Three and a half years ago, Victoria was bitten by a tick while at a church retreat. She didn't know what damage this could cause so she pulled it out and didn't tell anyone about it. Doctors in Oklahoma doesn't believe that Lyme Disease exists there. A year later (during her 8th grade year), Victoria was diagnosed with Mono. She has really bad fatigue, joint pain, headaches, insomnia and a low grade fever. She was out of school for three weeks and never fully recovered from it.
Over the next few months, she kept having symptoms on and off. Victoria would come home from school, sleep, eat dinner and go back to bed. She was easily in bed by 8:30 every night and she wasn't able to climb stairs easily. Several trips were made to the Primary Care Physician and lost of tests were run. Of course nothing was found to be wrong and was told that it was from the Mono. Victoria and her family were fine with that answer and she made it through her 8th grade year.
Victoria was really excited to start high school, but a few weeks into school she got really sick again. She began to miss a lot of school and all she could do was stay on the couch. She saw a specialist in Tulsa that ran more tests, but the end results were that she was still struggling with Mono. Victoria was extremely frustrated at this time. She knew that the doctors were missing something. Just like many who have followed the same path, she went to doctor after doctor and they couldn't find anything wrong with her. Victoria tried to ignore her symptoms and wanted just to make it to summer.
During last summer (between her freshman and sophomore year), Victoria started going downhill. She kept herself busy with mission trips and church camp even though she was completely exhausted. She began having horrible fatigue, pain all over and couldn't sleep in the latter part of the summer. She would also run a fever for no reason at all. Victoria felt as if she had the flu all the time.
Every morning of Victoria's sophomore year was such a struggle. She would have to leave school early a few days every week because of the horrilbe pain and fatigue. In October, she finally saw a Pediatric Rheumatologist. After a full exam, she was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. The specialist put her on strong medications. Victoria was scheduled to go for mission trips in Europe, but blacked out twice the night before going. She woke up and didn't know where she was. After an emergency call to the On-call rheumatologist, she stopped all of her medications. She went onto Europe and stayed for two weeks. After returning home, she went to school for one week. She didn't realize this would be her last week at school.. Her symptoms never let up and she was sick all the time. She went to a natural clinic every day. She only went to church and the clinic.
They heard about a clinic in Reno, Nevada that deals with some of the worst and hardest to treat diseases. They use some conventional medicine but mostly natural medicine. They had now done some research and suspected that Victoria had Lyme Disease. The clinic in Reno specializes in Lyme. On December 2nd, they flew to Reno. She went to the clinic and the next day, December 3rd, Victoria was diagnosed with Stage 3 Lyme Disease. She stayed for 3 weeks for treatment.
They got home a few days before Christmas and continued doing shots and homepathic medications. They had to go back to the clinic again mid-January. She started back at school as a homebound student. That means that she would get assignments from the internet with a teacher coming to her house once a week. It also will help make sure she gets through her sophomore year of high school. She stayed in Reno for 2 weeks and returned home.
Victoria started having better days and she finished up Driver's Education so that she could get her license. Even though she had a day of Extreme Pain and could barely walk, she was able to get her license. In February & March, she went to the hospital off and on with pain and weakness receiving fluids and pain medicine. After staying in the ER for 7 hours, the ER doctors finally admitted her. She wasn't given anything once she got up on the floor bcause they didn't know anything about Lyme. After a day and a half of nothing, they released her. On April 3rd, she got a PICC line put in and started at home IV treatments. She goes to the ER at least once a week and sometimes more.
She's trying to find a doctor that will take her case in Oklahoma. (and as a personal plea from ME .. if you know of a LLMD that can help her in Oklahoma ... get in touch with me so I can pass this information onto Victoria).
On May 11, her church held a prayer meeting for me and 2 other teens that are struggling with their health. It was such an encouragement to her to know that so many people care. God IS taking care of her and holding her through all of this. For the past week and a half, Victoria has been unable to get out of bed. She still struggles to walk and find her strength. They are hopeful to be going to Nevada as soon as they can. They know they need to get out of Oklahoma for treatment because they have had doctors yelling at them telling them Lyme isn't real.
Victoria is holding out to find better treatment that will help with the pain of long-term Lyme Disease. She's trying to keep the pain under control and keeping up her strength to understand what God's plan is for her through all of this. She wants people to know that even though many doctors in Oklahoma refuse to believe that Lyme exists there ~ it does and she has it ~ and so do many other people. She has hope.
She asks for prayer for her family right now. Victoria and her mother are leaving today for 3-4 weeks of treatments in Nevada. Her dad and little brother will be staying at home.
Victoria started a blog the other day. Go support her and if you have suggestions, please leave a comment for her!
blog- http://victoriawilguess.bl
I'm 41 and have late stage/chronic lyme, I couldn't imagine being a high schooler with multiple commitments with chronic lyme. My heart and prayers go out to you Victoria. May you recover and go on to live a normal life.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: If you are still looking and haven't been featured (IE I don't know you) ... and you want to be, look at the top and you'll see a message that says "post to blog." Click on that. It will give pull up an "email." Send me a message with your email address (please include it so that I can contact you, because even though it pulls up an "email" .. I don't receive any contact information.
ReplyDeleteIf for some reason that doesn't work ... leave some kind of contact information in a comment at one of the posts at the beginning. I have to approve those comments and it won't show up on the blog at all. :o)